Manning won't face mandatory life sentence

Wednesday

Jul 31, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 31, 2013 at 10:52 AM

A military judge yesterday found U.S. soldier Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge he faced for handing over documents to WikiLeaks, but he still likely faces a long jail term after being found guilty of 19 other counts.

A military judge yesterday found U.S. soldier Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge he faced for handing over documents to WikiLeaks, but he still likely faces a long jail term after being found guilty of 19 other counts.

Col. Denise Lind, ruling in a courtroom at Fort Meade, Va., said the 25-year-old Army private first class was guilty of five espionage charges, among many others, for the largest unauthorized release of classified U.S. data in the nation’s history.

The trove of documents, including battlefield videos and diplomatic cables, was a huge boost to the profile of the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website and its founder, Julian Assange. But yesterday’s verdict could be a blow to his efforts to encourage people with access to secret information to release it.

Assange called the verdict “an example of national security extremism.”

“It is a short-sighted judgment that cannot be tolerated and it must be reversed,” Assange told reporters at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been living for more than a year. “The abuse of Bradley Manning has left the world with a sense of disgust.”

Manning, who was working as a low-level intelligence analyst in Baghdad when he was arrested three years ago, could face up to 136 years in military prison, although legal experts said the actual term was likely to be much shorter. Lind will take up the question of his sentence in a hearing that starts today. It is expected to last most of August.

The U.S. government was pushing for a life sentence without parole, which would have come had Manning been convicted of aiding the enemy by leaking information that included battlefield reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The government viewed the action as a serious breach of national security, while anti-secrecy activists praised it as shining a light on shadowy U.S. operations abroad.

“The verdict is certainly a chilling one for investigative journalism, for people who might come into information that they believe should be part of the public discourse,” said Michael Bochenek, director of law and policy at Amnesty International.

Manning’s case is one of two prominent ones involving high-profile leakers, illustrating the limits of secrecy in the Internet age. Another leaker, former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, has been holed up at a Moscow airport for more than a month, despite U.S. calls for Russia to turn him over.

In the eight-week trial, Army prosecutors contended during Manning’s court-martial that U.S. security was harmed when WikiLeaks published videos of a 2007 attack by an American Apache helicopter gunship in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters employees; diplomatic cables, and secret details on prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Manning’s leaks to the site in 2009 and 2010 put the international spotlight on Assange.

The verdict may embolden the U.S. government to bring a criminal case against Assange, said James Goodale, a lawyer and author with expertise in press freedom.

“The bottom line is they won because the guy leaked illegally, and they’re only going to be encouraged to get the guy who’s on the other side of that equation,” said Goodale, a former lawyer for The New York Times.

Any charges against Assange likely would center on conspiring with Manning to have the young soldier violate the Espionage Act.

A crowd of about 30 Manning supporters gathered outside the highly secure confines of Fort Meade, home to the National Security Agency. One of them, Nathan Fuller, expressed concern over the stiff sentence Manning still could face.

“The remaining charges against him are still tantamount to life in prison. That’s still an outrage,” Fuller said. “He’s equated with spies and traitors.”

But two top U.S. congressmen from a House intelligence committee praised the verdict.

“Justice has been served today. PFC Manning harmed our national security, violated the public’s trust and now stands convicted of multiple serious crimes,” Reps. Michael Rogers, a Republican who chairs the committee, and Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat and its ranking member, said in a statement.

Military prosecutors called the defendant a “traitor” for publicly posting information that the U.S. government said could jeopardize national-security and intelligence operations.

Defense attorneys described Manning, a native of Crescent, Okla., as well-intentioned but naive in hoping that his disclosures would provoke a more intense debate in the U.S. about diplomatic and military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Information from The New York Times, The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers and the Associated Press was included in this story.

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